[Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words
Lplarry
lpscholar2@gmail.com
Mon May 8 07:52:52 PDT 2017
David,
Is it fair to assume
All words are symbols
All words are indices
All words are icons
However, the relationality (and ways of integrating) all 3 INEFFABLE primitives is key.
My attempt to follow what you refer to as being a (theme)
Also the couplet (placing/displacing) seems relevant to this theme in relation to context of the situation.
Sent from my Windows 10 phone
From: Andy Blunden
Sent: May 7, 2017 7:30 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The Stuff of Words
The reason why I picked out icon/index/symbol of all the
many firstness/secondness/thirdnesses Peirce offers us is
that all the rest are found in Hegel and systematically
elaborated there. But not icon/index/symbol. As you know
Greg I am not one of those that think that The Phenomenology
is the only book Hegel wrote, so I will refer you to the
Science of Logic, chapter on the Concept (a.k.a. Notion).
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden
http://home.mira.net/~andy
http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
On 8/05/2017 12:12 PM, Greg Thompson wrote:
> Andy (and others),
>
> I agree that Peirce seems a good complement to Hegel.
>
> One interesting bit where there seems to be some overlap
> is in Hegel's interest in what Silverstein calls, using
> Peircean language, "referential indexicals" (these are
> signs which have referential value but their referential
> value is primarily indexical - pronouns are a classic
> example, but see my next sentence for more examples). I
> can't recall where I saw this in Hegel's writing but it
> seems like he has a bit somewhere on "Here, This, Now" (as
> translated). Do you recall where this is? Or what Hegel is
> "up to" in that section? I've always wondered.
>
> As mentioned above, Silverstein makes quite a bit of the
> importance of referential indexicals in everyday talk. He
> calls them the "skeleton" on which we hang the rest of
> discourse (and without which, our discourse would be
> meaningless). And closer to home, in Stanton Wortham's
> essay Mapping Participant Deictics, Wortham makes the case
> for the importance of mapping participant deictics in the
> talk of a classroom. He argues that you can understand
> quite a bit about the social structure of a classroom by
> following how different participant deictics are deployed.
>
> Anyway, back to Hegel, Andy, I'd be interested to hear
> about Hegel and his Here, This, Now.
>
> Thanks,
> -greg
>
>
> On Sun, May 7, 2017 at 6:32 PM, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> Oh Henry I don't see Peirce as Linguist. Only a
> Linguist would see Peirce as a Linguist, because they
> see everything as a branch of Linguistics. I see
> Peirce as a Philosopher. And he could claim to be
> utterly incapable of managing his own life as the
> foremost qualification for being a philosopher. Peirce
> was a Logician who invented two different schools of
> philosophy: Pragmatism and Semiotics.
>
> I value Peirce's Icon/Index/Symbol in particular
> because it is a logical triad which Hegel never
> theorised and it nicely complements Hegel helping us
> understand how Logic is in the world. For Peirce,
> Semiotics is something going on in Nature before it is
> acquired by human beings, which is an idea I
> appreciate. He is also worthy of praise for how he
> overcame all kinds of Dualism with both his Semiotics
> and his Pragmaticism.
>
> A total madman. A real Metaphysician,
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
>
> On 8/05/2017 3:22 AM, HENRY SHONERD wrote:
>
> David and Andy,
> I have seen Peirce’s categories firstness,
> secondness and thirdness on the chat before, and
> certainly you were part of that discussion. I
> would like to understand that better, also how it
> relates to the three categories of signs (iconic,
> indexical and symbolic). I have been reading your
> “Thinking of Feeling” piece and wonder how that
> might relate, which I hope so, since it would
> bring development into the mix. Also (sorry!),
> Andy’s Academia articles on political
> representation and activity/social theory are
> probably relevant in some way, though Andy
> probably sees language as a figure against a
> larger ground and a linguist (like Peirce) turns
> the figure/ground relationship around?
> Henry
>
>
> On May 5, 2017, at 4:01 PM, David Kellogg
> <dkellogg60@gmail.com
> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Greg:
>
> (As usual, I don't see the problem. I usually
> don't see these problems
> until the tide is well and truly over my head.)
>
> Meaning is simply another word for
> organization. Organization is always
> present and never separable from matter: it's
> a property of matter, the way
> that the internet is a property of a computer.
> Sometimes this organization
> is brought about without any human
> intervention (if you are religious, you
> will say that it brought about divinely, and
> if you are Spinozan, by
> nature: it amounts to the same thing, because
> "Deus Sive Natura").
> Sometimes it is brought about by human
> ingenuity (but of course if you are
> religious you will say that it is the divine
> in humans at work, and if you
> are Spinozan you will say that humans are
> simply that part of nature which
> has become conscious of itself: once again, Ii
> think it amounts to the same
> thing). So of course there are not two kinds
> of substance, res cogitans vs
> res extensa, only one substance and different
> ways of organizing it (which
> in the end amount to the same thing).
>
> You say that discourse particles like "Guess
> what?" and "so there" and
> "because" and "irregardless" and "what you say
> to the contrary
> notwithstanding" are "indexical". I agree,
> insofar as they depend on their
> relationship to the context of situation for
> their meaning. You say that a
> Southern drawl is indexical, and that the
> relationship of jazz or blues or
> hiphop to blackness is indexical. I agree,
> insofar as they satisfy the
> condition I just mentioned. But "because" is
> also a symbol, and a
> Southerner still sounds like a Southerner when
> he/she moves to New York
> City (and in fact you can argue they sound
> more so). In Africa, jazz and
> blues and hiphop in Africa are related to
> Americanness and not to
> blackness.
>
> So your division of signs into just three
> categories is too simple, Greg.
> In fact, if you really read your Peirce, you
> will discover that there are
> tens of thousands of categories, but they are
> generated from three
> ineffable primitives ("firstness",
> "secondness", and "thirdness"). So for
> example all words are symbols insofar as you
> have to know English in order
> to understand "Guess what?" or "because". But
> some words are
> symbol-indices, symbols that function as
> indexes, because they depend
> on the context of situation for their meaning.
> Without the symbolic
> gateway, they cannot function as indices. My
> wife, for example, cannot tell
> a Southerner from a more general American
> accent, and I myself still have
> trouble figuring out who is an Australian and
> who is an FOB bloody pom.
> Similarly, my wife doesn't see the blackness
> in hiphop--it sounds like
> K-pop to her.
>
> I don't actually think that any signs are
> associative or "prehensive"; I
> think that they are all different ways of
> looking or apprehending. So for
> example you can apprehend a wording as a
> symbol: a way of organizing sound
> stuff so that it "stands for" a way of
> organizing other stuff (sometimes
> lunchboxes and backpacks, actual categories of
> objects and sometimes the
> abstract models-in-the-making that Andy calls
> "projects"). You can also
> look at wording as index: not as something
> that is "associated" to the lips
> and tongue by juxtaposition or proximity or
> even continguity but rather
> something that has a necessary relation to the
> vocal tract (which is itself
> not a physiological organ, but something
> brought about by human
> organization). But when I look at sound waves
> on my Praat spectrograph and
> think of the shelving sea, what I am trying to
> get at is the sound stuff,
> the noise, the firstness of the stuff of
> words. I'm not Cezanne: I don't
> think there is any way of doing this with my
> eyes or ears alone: I think it
> requires a very complex combination of tools
> and signs to get down to
> firstness. But as Spinoza would have said if
> he had breakfast with
> Bacon, the head and the hand are not much by
> themselves, but nobody
> has ever really shown the limits of what they
> can do when they put each
> other in order and start to organize the world
> around them.
>
> (And that is about as much philosophy as you
> are going to get out of me,
> I'm afraid. The tide is galloping in....)
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
> PS: What I am absolutely certain of is this:
> mediating activity is not
> absent in sign use, pace Alfredo or
> Wolff-Michael, but it is very different
> from mediating activity in tool use, for the
> same reason that painting is
> different from wording: in painting you CAN
> leave out the human (if you are
> doing a dead seal for example, or if you are
> Rothko or Jackson Pollack--but
> keep in mind that the former committed suicide
> and the latter murdered two
> innocent young women). But in wording you
> never ever can. Wording can feel
> unmediated--in fact it has to feel unmediated
> or it doesn't work very
> well--but in reality it's even more mediated
> than ever.
>
> dk
>
>
> On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 1:09 AM, Greg Thompson
> <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com
> <mailto:greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> David (and others),
>
> In the interests of disagreement (which I
> know you dearly appreciate), your
> last post included this:
> "Words don't "cause" meaning: they provide
> material correlates for meaning
> and in that sense "realise" them as matter."
>
> I was with you up until that point, but
> that's where I always lose you.
>
> I know it is a rather trite thing to say
> but I guess it really depends on
> what you mean by "meaning". If by meaning,
> you mean some plane of existence
> that runs parallel to the material stuff,
> then this seems to be a bit of
> trouble since this leaves us with, on the
> one hand, "matter" (res extensa?
> noumena?), and on the other hand "meaning"
> (res cogitans? phenomena?).
> Matter is easy enough to locate, but where
> do we locate "meaning" as you
> have described it?
>
> This reminds me of Saussure's classic
> drawing on p. 112 of his Cours
> (attached) in which "the indefinite plane
> of jumbled ideas" (A in the
> diagram) exists on one side of the chasm
> and "the equally vague plane of
> sounds" (B) exists on the other side of
> the chasm. Each side is
> self-contained and self-referential, and
> never the twain shall meet. Worlds
> apart.
>
> And this ties to the conversation in the
> other thread about the
> ineffability of meaning (as well as Andy's
> Marx quote about a science of
> language that is shorn from life). My
> suspicion is that this supposed
> ineffability of meaning has everything to
> do with this Saussurean approach
> to semiotics (i.e., meaningfulness).
>
> Peirce's triadic view of the sign offers a
> different approach that may give
> a way out of this trouble by putting the
> word back INto the world. (p. 102
> of the attached Logic as Semiotic).
>
> Peirce offers three kinds of relations of
> representamen (signifier) to
> object: iconic, indexical, and symbolic.
> The symbol is the relation with
> which we are most familiar - it is the one
> that Saussure speaks of and is
> the one that is ineffable or, in
> Saussure's words, "arbitrary", i.e.
> "conventional". It is the stuff of words,
> the meaning of which is found in
> other words (hence the sense of
> ineffability). With only the symbolic
> function, the whole world of words would
> be entirely self-referential and
> thus truly ineffable (and this is why I
> like to say that Derrida is the end
> of the Saussurean road - he took that idea
> to its logical conclusion and
> discovered that the meaning of meaning is,
> well, empty (and thus
> ineffable)).
>
> But Peirce has two other relations of
> representamen to object, the iconic
> and the indexical. In signs functioning
> iconically, the representamen
> contains some quality of the object that
> it represents (e.g., a map that
> holds relations of the space that it
> represents or onomatopoeia like "buzz"
> in which the representamen has some of the
> qualities of the sound of the
> bee flying by). With signs functioning
> indexically, the relationship of
> representamen to object is one of temporal
> or spatial contiguity (e.g.,
> where there is smoke there is fire, or
> where there is a Southern twang,
> there is a Southerner, or, most
> classically, when I point, the object to
> which I am pointing is spatially
> contiguous with the finger that is
> pointing).
>
> Now if I follow the argument of another of
> the inheritors of Roman
> Jakobson's legacy, Michael Silverstein
> (yes, Hasan and Halliday weren't the
> only inheritors of this tradition -
> Michael was a student of Jakobson's at
> Harvard... and he does a great impression
> of Jacobson too), then we can
> indeed locate a ground of the word (i.e.,
> the symbolic function) in the
> more primitive (i.e., rudimentary)
> indexical function.
>
> But that argument is always a bit too much
> for me (if there are any takers,
> the best place to find this argument is in
> Silverstein's chapter
> "Metapragmatic Discourse, Metapragmatic
> Function," or in less explicit but
> slightly more understandable article
> "Indexical Order and the Dialectics of
> Sociolinguistics Life").
>
> Vygotsky's argument is quite a bit more
> elegant and comprehensible: in
> ontogeny meaningfulness begins with the
> index, first as the index par
> excellence, pointing (something that, as
> Andy has previously pointed out,
> might not be exactly how things go in a
> literal sense, but the general
> structure here works well, I think, as a
> heuristic if nothing else - words
> are first learned as indexes, temporally
> and spatially collocated, "bottle"
> is first uttered as a way of saying
> "thirsty" and then later to refer to a
> co-present object; note this is also why
> young kids get discourse markers
> at such a young age (and seems incredibly
> precocious when they do!), since
> discourse markers are primarily
> indexical). The indexical function is the
> rudimentary form that then provides the
> groundwork for the development of
> the symbolic function.
>
> So then, in this Peircean(Vygotskian)
> approach, the meaning of signs is not
> ineffable, there is a grounding for words,
> and that grounding is the
> indexical, the "word"/sign that is both in
> the world and of the world.
>
> This seems to me a way of putting meaning
> back into matter. And perhaps
> speaking of words as the material
> correlates of meaning can be a useful
> heuristic (i.e., how else can we talk
> about meanings and concepts given our
> current set of meanings/concepts?). But we
> should also recognize that if it
> becomes more than an heuristic it can lead
> us astray if we take it too far.
>
> I'd add here that I think one of the
> greatest opportunities for CHAT to
> make a contribution to social science
> today is in its conceptualization of
> "concepts" (and, by extension,
> "meaningfulness"). I think that perhaps one
> of the most taken-for-granted aspects of
> social science today is the idea
> that we know what "concepts" are. In
> anthropology, people easily talk about
> "cultural concepts" and typically they
> mean precisely something that floats
> around in some ethereal plane of
> "meaningfulness" and which is not of the
> material stuff of the world. Yet, this
> runs counter to the direction that
> anthropology is heading these days with
> the so-called "ontological turn"
> (I'll hold off on explaining this for now
> since this post is already
> running way too long, but I'll just
> mention that one of the aims of this is
> to get to a non-dualistic social science).
> CHAT's conception of the concept
> seems to me to offer precisely what is
> needed -- a way of understanding the
> concept as a fundamentally cultural and
> historical thing, rather than
> simply as an "ideal" thing. The concept is
> the holding of a(n historical)
> relation across time (cf. Hebb's synapse
> or Peirce's sunflower). Concepts
> are thus little historical text-lets.
>
> Okay, that was too much. Perhaps I will
> find some time in the future to
> return to that last part, but there is no
> time to develop it further now.
>
> Anyway, I'm glad that I finally had the
> opportunity to catch up to these
> conversations. Delightful reading/thinking.
>
> I'll keep reading but no promises that
> I'll be able to comment (as a young
> scholar, I need to be spending my time
> putting stuff out - and unlike the
> rest of you, I'm no good at
> multi-tasking... it's either one or the other
> for me).
>
> Very best,
> greg
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 4:18 PM, David
> Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com
> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Well, yes. But if present day
> conditions are the REVERSE of the
>
> conditions
>
> under which Vygotsky was writing--that
> is, if the present trend is to
> subsume labor under language instead
> of the other way around--don't we
>
> need
>
> this distinction between signs and
> tools more than ever? That is, if
>
> sloppy
>
> formulations like "cultural capital",
> "symbolic violence", "use/exchange
> value of the word" are erasing the
> distinction between a mediating
>
> activity
>
> which acts on the environment and a
> mediating activity which acts on
>
> other
>
> mediators and on the self, and which
> therefore has the potential for
> reciprocity and recursion, isn't this
> exactly where the clear-eyed
> philosophers need to step in and
> straighten us out?
>
> I think that instead what is happening
> is that our older generation
> of rheumy-eyed philosophers (present
> company--usually--excluded) are too
> interested in the "tool power" of
> large categories and insufficiently
> interested in fine distinctions that
> make a difference. But perhaps it
> is also that our younger generation of
> misty-eyed philosophers are, as
> Eagleton remarked, more interested in
> copulating bodies than exploited
> ones. Yet these fine distinctions that
> do make a difference equally allow
> generalization and abstraction and
> tool power, and the copulating flesh
>
> and
>
> the exploited muscles are one and the
> same.
>
> Take, for example, your remark about
> the Fourier transform performed by
>
> the
>
> ear (not the brain--the inner ear
> cochlea--I can see the world centre for
> studying the cochlea from my office
> window). Actually, it's part of a
>
> wide
>
> range of "realisation" phenomena that
> were already being noticed by
> Vygotsky. In realisational phenomena,
> you don't have cause and effect,
>
> just
>
> as in cause and effect you don't have
> "association". Words don't "cause"
> meaning: they provide material
> correlates for meaning and in that sense
> "realise" them as matter. Meaning does
> not "cause" wording; it correlates
> wording to a semantics--an activity of
> consciousness--and through it to a
> context of situation or culture, and
> in that sense "realises" it.
>
> So in his lecture on early childhood,
> Vygotsky says that the
>
> stabilization
>
> of forms, colours, and sizes by the
> eye in early childhood is part of a
>
> two
>
> way relationship, a dialogue, between
> the sense organs and the brain. The
> reason why we don't see a table as a
> trapezoid, when we stand over it and
> compare the front with the back, the
> reason why we don't see a piece of
> chalk at nighttime as black, the
> reason why we have orthoscopic
>
> perception
>
> and we don't see a man at a distance
> as a looming midget is that the
>
> brain
>
> imposes the contrary views on the eye.
> And where does the brain get this
> view if not from language and from
> other people?
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 11:55 AM, Andy
> Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> Personally, I think the first and
> most persistently important thing is
>
> to
>
> see how much alike are tables and
> words.
>
> But ... Vygotsky was very
> insistent on the distinction
> because he was
> fighting a battle against the idea
> that speech ought to be subsumed
>
> under
>
> the larger category of labour. He
> had to fight for semiotics against a
> vulgar kind of orthodox Marxism.
> But we here in 2017 are living in
> different times, where we have
> Discourse Theory and Linguistics while
> Marxism is widely regarded as
> antique. As Marx said "Just as
>
> philosophers
>
> have given thought an independent
> existence, so they were bound to make
> language into an independent
> realm." and we live well and truly
> in the
> times when labour is subsumed
> under language, and not the other way
>
> around.
>
> Everyone knows that a table is
> unlike a word. The point it to
>
> understand
>
> how tables are signs and word are
> material objects.
>
> Andy
>
> (BTW David, back in 1986 I walked
> in an offshoot of the bionic ear
> project. The ear has a little
> keyboard that works like a piano
> keyboard
>
> in
>
> reverse, making a real time
> Fourier transform of that air
> pressure wave
>
> and
>
> coding the harmonics it in nerve
> impulse. The brain never hears that
> pressure signal.)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://home.mira.net/~andy
> <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy>
> http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making
> <http://www.brill.com/products/book/origins-collective-decision-making>
> On 3/05/2017 7:06 AM, Alfredo
> Jornet Gil wrote:
>
> David (and or Mike, Andy,
> anyone else), could you give a
> bit more on
>
> that
>
> distinction between words and
> tables?
>
> And could you say how (and
> whether) (human, hand) nails
> are different
> from tables; and then how
> nails are different from words?
>
> Alfredo
> ________________________________________
> From:
> xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.
>
> edu>
>
> on behalf of David Kellogg
> <dkellogg60@gmail.com
> <mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>>
> Sent: 01 May 2017 08:43
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,
> Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] The Stuff
> of Words
>
> Gordon Wells quotes this from
> an article Mike wrote in a
> Festschrift
>
> for
>
> George Miller. Mike is talking
> about artefacts:
>
> "They are ideal in that they
> contain in coded form the
> interactions of
> which they
> were previously a part and
> which they mediate in the
> present (e.g.,
>
> the
>
> structure of
> a pencil carries within it the
> history of certain forms of
> writing).
>
> They
>
> are material
> in that they are embodied in
> material artifacts. This principle
>
> applies
>
> with equal
> force whether one is
> considering language/speech or
> the more usually
>
> noted
>
> forms
> of artifacts such as tables
> and knives which constitute
> material
>
> culture.
>
> What
> differentiates a word, such as
> “language” from, say, a table.
> is the
> relative prominence
> of their material and ideal
> aspects. No word exists apart
> from its
> material
> instantiation (as a
> configuration of sound waves,
> or hand movements,
>
> or
>
> as
>
> writing,
> or as neuronal activity),
> whereas every table embodies
> an order
>
> imposed
>
> by
>
> thinking
> human beings."
>
> This is the kind of thing that
> regularly gets me thrown out of
>
> journals
>
> by
>
> the ear. Mike says that the
> difference between a word and
> a table is
>
> the
>
> relative salience of the ideal
> and the material. Sure--words
> are full
>
> of
>
> the ideal, and tables are full
> of material. Right?
>
> Nope. Mike says it's the other
> way around. Why? Well, because
> a word
> without some word-stuff (sound
> or graphite) just isn't a
> word. In a
> word, meaning is solidary with
> material sounding: change one,
> and you
> change the other. But with a
> table, what you start with is
> the idea of
>
> the
>
> table; as soon as you've got
> that idea, you've got a table.
> You could
> change the material to
> anything and you'd still have
> a table.
>
> Wells doesn't throw Mike out
> by the ear. But he does ignore the
>
> delightful
>
> perversity in what Mike is
> saying, and what he gets out
> of the quote
>
> is
>
> just that words are really
> just like tools. When in fact
> Mike is
>
> saying
>
> just the opposite.
>
> (The part I don't get is
> Mike's notion that the
> structure of a pencil
> carries within it the history
> of certain forms of writing.
> Does he
>
> mean
>
> that the length of the pencil
> reflects how often it's been
> used? Or is
>
> he
>
> making a more archaeological
> point about graphite, wood,
> rubber and
>
> their
>
> relationship to a certain
> point in the history of
> writing and erasing?
> Actually, pencils are more
> like tables than like
> words--the idea has
>
> to
>
> come first.)
>
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
> <http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
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